BMMHS Evening Meeting: The Battle of the River Plate
The Battle of the River Plate
Speaker: Peter Hore

Wednesday 14th December 2022; 7:30pm
BMMHS Meeting Venue
Woodcote Village Hall, Reading Road, Woodcote, RG8 0QY
In view of COVID the meetings may switch to a Zoom talk at short notice. Please check the bmmhs.org home page for the latest information.
Henry Harwood and the Battle of the River Plate, 13- 17 December 1939
Henry Harwood: Hero of the Battle of the River Plate.
Peter Hore describes the events, and the man behind them, which led up to the battle which took place 13 to 17 December 1939 off Montevideo – 83 years ago tonight – , between a German pocket battleship and three, weaker British cruisers.
The British ships were however skilfully led by Commodore Henry Harwood who outmanoeuvred the German and forced him to scuttle in shallow water.
Churchill described the battle as “a flash of light and colour … a great action which will long be told in song and story” and “which warmed the cockles of the Nation’s heart”






About the speaker - Peter Hore
Captain Peter Hore, Royal Navy
Peter Hore served worldwide as a ‘pusser’ during a full career in the Royal Navy, including exchange service in 1964 in the US Navy, and two tours of duty in NATO’s Standing Naval Force Atlantic 1972 & 1973. During the Falklands War he was joint logistics commander on Ascension Island, in 1987-90 he was Base Supply Officer, Hong Kong. Subsequently he was military assistant to DCDS(Systems), he helped to direct the Royal Navy’s applied research programme, 1992-94 and was Head of Defence Studies, 1997-2000.
He qualified as an interpreter in Spanish and Swedish, and as a Cantonese linguist.
Since 2000 he has spent nine years in the film and TV industry, and is now a fulltime author, editor and journalist.
A freelance obituarist at the London Daily Telegraph since 2002, he has written some 1,500 obituaries on the men and women of the Royal Navy, the Royal Marines and the Merchant Navy also the SBS, the FANY, the French Resistance, yachtsmen, shipping magnates, etc.
Peter writes reviews and articles for several newspapers and journals including the influential Warships International Fleet Review where he is associate editor. He has written or edited a dozen books on naval history, biography and strategy, which can be found at Amazon’s Peter Hore page , including HMS Pickle , the biography of a ship, and Nelson’s Band of Brothers , a ‘who’s who’ of the officers who served under Nelson at the admiral’s three great battles, and he has just completed five years as editor of the annual Trafalgar Chronicle which is the prime source of information and the publication of choice for new research about the Georgian navy.
For more information on Peter’s latest books, Henry Harwood, Hero of the River Plate, published in July 2018, see https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Henry-Harwood-Hardback/p/14805 and Bletchley Park’s Secret Source: Churchill’s Wrens and the Wireless War see https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Bletchley-Parks-Secret-Source-Hardback/p/18843
He is an elected fellow of the Royal Historical Society, of the Society for Nautical Research, and of the Royal Swedish Society for Nautical Sciences, as well as a Chartered Member of the Institute of Linguists.
He celebrated his 70th birthday by walking from St Jean pied du Port in France to Muxía in Galicia.
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